Connecting An E2500 To An Existing Router - Quesitons Please

As I just upgraded my router this week, I was thinking of giving my old Linksys E2500 to my brother since his existing wireless router doesn’t seem to provide a very stable wireless signal in his apartment. There might be signal interference issues because his router is set to a crowded channel, or some other reason, but I am not sure.

Anyway, I was wondering if I could just attach my E2500 to his existing modem/router with a LAN cable and have the E2500 receive the internet connection from his existing router so that I can turn my E2500 into a second wireless internet connection for him in his apartment?

Also, is it possible to do this without putting his existing router into bridge mode?

Assuming the above would work, what sort of configuration would I need to make to Tomato on Basic Settings > Network > WAN Settings on the E2500?

The reason it would be helpful if I can set it up as per above (rather than setting things up in any other way) is he lives far away from me and I will be visiting his apartment for just 1 day in the near future. So I would like to avoid doing a lot of reconfiguration to his existing router since I won’t have much time there. It would be great if I could just sort of plug and play the E2500 into his existing router and get the E2500 running with the internet quickly.

I also don’t know the username and password for his existing router, and I don’t think he does either. Plus I don’t know if his router is set up for wireless admin access. I will only be traveling with a tablet computer when I visit him so I would have no way to hardwire a desktop computer to his existing router (assuming it isn’t set up for wireless admin access) to be able to configure anything anyway.

If I know how to pre-configure my E2500 then I could get it setup and test it with my existing router first under the above scenario and then have it ready to just plug into his router when I get there.

Fairly simple set up to accomplish this, however you will need to know the IP Address/Subnet/DHCP Range of his current router. Call him and ask him to type ipconfig into Command Prompt of his computer and you will be able to see the Default Gateway (Router IP) and the Subnet Mask. This essentially all you need, although knowing the DHCP range is nice as you will want to pick an address outside of this range (not absolutely necessary).

I will list steps below to accomplish what you are trying to do. You can also search how to configure a router as a Wireless Access Point (WAP) and you'll find plenty of articles.

1) Log into your E2500
2) Change the IP Address of Bridge br0 to be within the same Subnet of your brother's router.
For example: Your brothers Default Gateway is 192.168.100.254 with a Subnet Mask of 255.255.255.0, which means you can choose any address between 192.168.100.1-253, but as mentioned above, if you know his DHCP range (ie 192.168.100.100-180), you should choose an address that won't be assigned by DHCP, ie. 192.168.100.250.
3) Reboot & log back in (You will now be using the address you just assigned to access you web interface)
4) Configure the wireless network to whatever you desire
5) Disable the DHCP Server of your router
6) Reboot
7) Take router to your brothers, plug in an Ethernet cable between the LAN of your brother's router and the LAN of the router you brought. Do not use the WAN port of your router.

Fairly simple set up to accomplish this, however you will need to know the IP Address/Subnet/DHCP Range of his current router. Call him and ask him to type ipconfig into Command Prompt of his computer and you will be able to see the Default Gateway (Router IP) and the Subnet Mask. This essentially all you need, although knowing the DHCP range is nice as you will want to pick an address outside of this range (not absolutely necessary).

I will list steps below to accomplish what you are trying to do. You can also search how to configure a router as a Wireless Access Point (WAP) and you'll find plenty of articles.

1) Log into your E2500
2) Change the IP Address of Bridge br0 to be within the same Subnet of your brother's router.
For example: Your brothers Default Gateway is 192.168.100.254 with a Subnet Mask of 255.255.255.0, which means you can choose any address between 192.168.100.1-253, but as mentioned above, if you know his DHCP range (ie 192.168.100.100-180), you should choose an address that won't be assigned by DHCP, ie. 192.168.100.250.
3) Reboot & log back in (You will now be using the address you just assigned to access you web interface)
4) Configure the wireless network to whatever you desire
5) Disable the DHCP Server of your router
6) Reboot
7) Take router to your brothers, plug in an Ethernet cable between the LAN of your brother's router and the LAN of the router you brought. Do not use the WAN port of your router.

That should do it.

Cheers.

vLAN32

Click to expand...

Thank you so much. Since this post went unanswered for quite a while on this site I ended up posting it on another forum as well and get pretty far when suddenly it seems the router just died or became bricked somehow. Not sure there is any way to revive the router again now, but if you have a moment and would be kind enough to read the the thread through perhaps then maybe you will have some idea on how to revive the router I am hoping. Please see here when you have time:

Thank you so much. Since this post went unanswered for quite a while on this site I ended up posting it on another forum as well and get pretty far when suddenly it seems the router just died or became bricked somehow. Not sure there is any way to revive the router again now, but if you have a moment and would be kind enough to read the the thread through perhaps then maybe you will have some idea on how to revive the router I am hoping. Please see here when you have time:

I have read through your other post. Honestly, I do not know what happened, nor how to recover it. I have two E2500's running Tomato, but have never had this issue (knock on wood). You've already received the same advice that I'd be able to give, in regards to re-flashing via FTP, etc. Hopefully you find your answer.

Thank you for taking a look. Hopefully this never happens with your E2500 routers. The only trick left up my sleeve is to try and connect it via a LAN cable to another computer in case there is an issue between the E2500 and my desktop. I have a laptop, but it only has a wireless network card. So I've ordered a USB lan cable adapter and will try hard wiring it to my laptop when I receive the adapter to see if I can FTP to it from the laptop. If that doesn't work I may give up. It wasn't an expensive router so no big loss. Thanks again.

I have now gotten a USB to ethernet adapter and was able to connect the E2500 to my laptop. It lives! It took a few minutes for it to get assigned the 192.168.1.1 IP address by my laptop (it was back to 192.168.1.1 because I had done a reset on it) and then I was able to get back to the Tomato admin interface via the browser and reconfigure the router to 192.168.3.1 and made all the other wireless settings needed. I am glad I didn’t just bin the thing.

When I plug it back into the desktop as before though it still comes up without an IP for some reason. I don’t know why but the router and my desktop PC have decided they don’t like each other anymore. That is OK. Not so important. The router is alive and correctly configured now the way I want it.

Now I can focus again on trying to get it setup to bring over to my brother’s house so I can just plug it into his existing router and give him a better wireless access point to connect to his internet.

So I am back to testing it with my existing router to make sure it is all going to work when I get it over to my brother’s place. So I plugged a LAN cable from one of the 4 LAN ports on my existing router that has internet access into one of the LAN ports on the E2500. Then on the E2500 Tomato settings I have this for Network:

Wan Settings > Type > Disabled

LAN > IP Address 192.168.3.1 > DHCP Disabled

All Is working fine. I can access the E2500 wirelessly and can use it to surf the internet using the internet connection from my existing router. All is well.

The only problem is I don’t know my brother’s default gateway and I am pretty sure I won’t be able to get into his router to check it since I won’t have a computer with me when I go to his place and he doesn’t have one either at the moment. He just uses internet wirelessly with his smartphone and tablet. I will have my iPhone and iPad with me, but unless his router is set up for wireless admin access then it will be useless. And the router was installed by his ISP when he connected service. So I don’t think he even knows what his router’s admin username and password are. The only thing he knows is the Shared Key for his router so he can use WiFi.

So let’s just assume I won’t be able to check his default gateway. My default gateway on my existing router though is 192.168.2.1 with a DHCP range of 192.168.2.1 through 192.168.2.51. And when I connect the E2500 to it with an IP of 192.168.3.1 on the e2500 it works fine even though the IP is outside the DHCP range. So can I assume it will work the same with his router if the E2500’s IP remains outside of his DHCP range?